But Abby actually craved the freedom that came from living off-grid. She’d spent so much time connected to everyone and everything, she couldn’t sleep unless her phone was turned all the way up and placed directly under her pillow. After all, with her lifestyle in California, she couldn’t afford to miss anything.
By the time she arrived in the dungeons of Casa Blanca, she’d slicked on a fresh layer of lip gloss and a smile. She changed into the dark slacks and form-fitting white blouse necessary for the event and checked in with Mandy.
“Oh, good, you’re here.” She nodded to another hostess and put her hand on Abby’s shoulder. “I need you on the floor. Etta just spilled an entire tray of champagne, and Lacey’s spitting nails.”
A small surge of satisfaction at Etta’s blunder roared through Abby. She finished tucking her shirt and said, “Champagne. On it.”
“Turn on your LA charm,” Mandy called after her, which almost made Abby turn back and stomp right off the property. Her stride hitched, but she kept moving toward the party. She did have some amazing LA charm. It was why Marcus took her to all his press events, dressed up to the nines with glinting jewelry and the latest fashions.
Had she really enjoyed the clicking cameras? The expensive fabrics against her skin? The false eyelashes and microbladed eyebrows?
The last two, definitely, as she still maintained them even here on the island. And she loved a good haircut, especially if she splurged on making her already blonde hair highlighted as if kissed by the sun. She enjoyed her conversations with Gloria too, and she held her head high as she palmed a tray of bubbly drinks and entered the ballroom where the event was in full swing.
She definitely used to like gatherings like this. But did she now? The room was dominated by men, most of them dressed in expensive suits and shiny shoes that probably cost more than her aunt’s house. A squeeze started in her throat—she didn’t like events such as these.
Then the crowd parted to reveal the handsome man staying in Rockrose. Almost as if he were a magnet and she metal, she gravitated toward him on an arced path, stopping every so often as someone reached for a drink. She smiled, she oozed her charm, and yet she kept one eye on him.
He seemed to track her too, and finally their paths intersected near a table of middle-aged animal doctors who seemed as bored with the party as this stunning stranger was.
“You’re the woman from the villa,” he said, ignoring the last champagne glass on her tray.
“Guilty.” She gazed up at him, stars already forming in her vision. She blinked them away. He wasn’t good for her. She didn’t even like men like him. “You’re a veterinarian?”
“You say that with so much doubt.” He didn’t allow his gaze to settle on her but swept the crowd like there was someone much more interesting to talk to if only he could find them.
“You don’t strike me as the doctorly type.”
“No?” He sipped his water. “I have the degree.”
Yeah, well, she had one too, and she didn’t use it. She didn’t know this man though, so she simply said, “That’s great. Where’s your practice?”
“Out west,” he said vaguely.
“I’m from out west,” she said. “California.”
That brought his eyes to hers. “Oh yeah? What brings you to Florida?”
“My aunt lives here, and I needed—she needed—I came to stay with her for a while.” In her peripheral vision, she caught Etta watching her exchange. “Well, good to run into you again.” She started to move away, but his hand shot out and latched onto her wrist.
“Wait.”
Sparks shattered through her, making her shoulders tingle and her feet grow roots.
“I’m Noah Benson,” he said, his voice low. His dark eyes burned into hers, gripping her with a strength she’d never felt and refusing to let go. “And I don’t actually have a veterinary practice out west.”
Noah couldn’t believe what he’d just said. Only that he’d wanted to shout it from the buttercream-colored rooftops of this resort for the past couple of hours. He didn’t even know this woman’s name, but he’d felt compelled to tell her about his façade of posing as a veterinarian.
A flicker of surprise darted through her expression. “Oh, so we’re playing confessional?” She smiled, so much charisma and beauty in the gesture Noah felt like she’d punched him in the chest. “I’m Abby Thames, and I ran away from my boyfriend in LA, disappeared off the grid, and started working as a maid while living with my aunt, who I suspect might be losing her marbles.”
His fingers uncoiled from around her wrist. She flashed him another smile, this one tinged with sadness around the edges, and moved away. Almost immediately, the woman who’d dropped twenty full champagne glasses appeared in front of him. This time, she carried a much smaller tray of salmon and goat cheese tartlets.
He took one though he loathed goat cheese and took a step back, keeping the blonde Abby on the edge of his vision. He shouldn’t. He should toss the disgusting tartlet in the trash and get out of this ballroom. Get back to his dogs. Get back to his normal life.
Problem was, he didn’t have a normal life anymore. At least, he didn’t know what constituted normal for him at the moment.
Maybe it was the pixie blonde, with blue eyes as exhilarating as the sky above snow-capped mountain peaks. She was tall and lithe, moved with grace and power, and though she had the phony, lacy eyelashes and those semi-permanent eyebrows, he suspected that was all that was fake about her.
She disappeared through a service door, and Noah sidestepped a conversation he didn’t care to be drawn into and positioned himself next to the door.
Abby returned a few minutes later, and he stepped in front of her, wondering what in the world he was doing. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“I’m working.” A shutter closed over her eyes now.
Noah mentally kicked himself. She probably thought he just wanted to get her in bed. “You can tell me what you lost in the villa.”
“I’d rather not.” Her gaze dropped to the floor for a moment. “I have to get back—”
“After you get off, then,” he said. “Come to Rockrose.” He wanted to add more to the invitation, like what they’d be doing, but he didn’t know what they’d be doing. He just knew he wanted to hear more of her confessionals, maybe spill some of his.
She examined his face as if she could detect crazy just by looking. “I don’t even know you.”
“Noah Benson,” he said again. “Google me.”
A hint of a smile ghosted across her pretty mouth before straightening. “Don’t you dare Google me,” she said in all seriousness.
“I won’t.” He pressed one palm to his heart. “You promise to come to Rockrose and tell me everything yourself?”
She cocked her head and studied him again. “Why?”
He didn’t know why. “Why not?” he countered. Before she could list a single reason, he plucked a glass of champagne from her tray and walked away. He took one sip of the stuff before he remembered he hated it. He wanted to be stone-cold sober if Abby showed up, so he set the glass on the next tray that went by.
Not if, he thought. When.
3
Noah’s hopes lingered somewhere around his bare feet when an hour passed and Abby didn’t show up at his villa. The two dogs snoozed on the patio pavers, and Noah kept his gaze out on the black water he could hear lapping the shore but couldn’t see.
Would she come?
Why did he care so much?
He ran his hand through his hair, wondering if it was time to cut it now that he wasn’t leading small groups of people through the backcountry of the Tetons. He fit in perfectly in Jackson Hole’s posh skiing scene. But here? Not so much.
“Definitely not the doctorly type.”
He spun from the dark shore at the sound of Abby’s voice, his eyes taking precious moments to adjust to the light from the villa framing her. She’d untucked her white shirt, but it still s
tuck in all the right places along her curves. She brushed absently at her short locks, and he wondered if they’d been longer in the recent past.
“No?” He glanced down at the pair of cotton pants he wore, barely knotted enough to keep them on his hips. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The beachside villa didn’t require it.
Her gaze slid down his body too, and she blinked rapidly a couple of times. “No.” She sat on the chaise he’d dragged to the edge of the patio and absently patted Lord Pawton.
“You came.” He wasn’t sure why he was stating the obvious. Maybe because he had no freaking clue what to talk about with her. He only knew he felt…something pull between them that hadn’t so much as moved inside him for years.
“I turned back four separate times.” A nervous laugh followed her admission, and Noah moved to sit in the chair across from her as she held up her phone. “I’ve told no less than a half-dozen people where I am.”
He chuckled, completely unworried about her friends. The sound died in the back of his throat almost as fast as it had started. “No one knows where I am.”
She cocked her head at him, almost like she was straining to hear between the syllables. “So let me see if I can figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“Who you are.”
He started to scoff, that trademark snowboarder toss of his long hair stalling in mid-motion. He cleared his throat and gestured for her to go ahead and try. He’d started this confessional, and he supposed he’d have to see it all the way through to the end. And for some reason, with Abby, that didn’t bother him.
“Your mother doesn’t know where you are?”
“She knows I quit my job.”
Abby nodded, her blue eyes catching some of the sparkle from the pool and glowing. “So we’ve got a man with a veterinary degree he hasn’t used, unemployed, and staring out at water he can’t see.” She clucked her tongue playfully, and Noah couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to kiss her.
“Definitely a girlfriend issue.” She looked at him with hope and expectations in her expression.
“Fiancé,” he said. “But that’s a technicality I’m willing to overlook.”
Abby sucked in a breath, her gaze dropping to her hands, which until now, had been resting calmly on her lap. Now those fingers worked around and around each other, a tell-tale sign of her nerves.
“So you didn’t Google me,” he said.
She shook her head. “I like a good mystery.”
A rush roared through his head. She seemed kind, contemplative, real. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t see how fake Jules, his ex-fiancé, had been. He’d worked the resort alongside her father for so long, and he’d believed every word the older man had told him. He’d been stupid, blind, naïve.
So though his heart raced, and he really wanted to surge forward and ask Abby to breakfast, he pressed his lips closed and held the invitation back.
“I’m thinking a surfer,” she said. “But you seem a little awkward on the beach. So maybe not.”
“Is it the long hair?” He grinned at her, very aware of how his hair fell along his jaw. Very aware that women who liked long hair went crazy for his.
“It’s longer than mine.” She gave no indication if she liked long hair on men or not. Dang, he really hoped she did.
“Yours looks like a fresh cut,” he said. “Maybe when things went bad with the boyfriend, you decided to cut a lot more than just him out of your life.”
She lifted one sexy shoulder in a small shrug. “Maybe.”
But there was no maybe about it. Noah was fascinated by her, everything about her. “Are you hungry? I can call room service.”
Abby didn’t do things like saunter down the beach to a stranger’s villa. She’d been out of the dating game for so long, she wasn’t even sure how to flirt. Her stomach rumbled, and she decided to go with basic bodily functions.
“I am a little hungry,” she admitted. But whether it was for food or a taste of Noah’s mouth, she wasn’t sure.
He sprang into motion, striding with his powerful, athletic legs into the villa. All of Abby’s muscles released. She’d been holding them so tight, so tight, since finding him half-naked on the pool deck. He was definitely not a veterinarian, and not only because of his attire.
Animal doctors didn’t have abs up to their eyeballs and tanned skin for miles. No, Noah worked outdoors. He had the rough, rugged look of a man who could tame waves into submission, or mountains into dust.
Definitely a surfer or a snowboarder, she thought as echoes of his voice met her ears. She turned toward the kitchen, where he held a phone to his ear but kept his eyes locked on her. Heat rose through her, and her first inclination was to duck her head and hide her satisfied smile. But that body held her captive, and she openly stared at him.
He hung up and walked toward her, those narrow hips downright dangerous to her health. She finally got control of her hormones and glanced away.
“I hope you like fried cheese,” he said.
“Who doesn’t?”
He sat on the chaise behind her, though there certainly wasn’t enough room for his tall frame and broad shoulders. His skin touched hers, sending shockwaves of desire through her. He didn’t fumble his fingers as they brushed hers and then filled the gaps between hers. A low laugh he kept buried in his chest rumbled through her core, further intensifying the chemistry between them.
“I got some sliders too,” he said. “And some sort of fruit and cheese platter.”
Abby stared at their joined hands as a measure of happiness spread through her. “My aunt loves fruit and cheese,” she said in a breathless voice she barely recognized. “I’m more of a fruit purist.”
“A fruit purist, huh? What does that mean?”
“It means fruit should just be eaten as-is. Let’s not go crazy and start mixing fruit and cheese, or fruit and chocolate.” She twisted to look at him and found his face only inches from hers. His dark-as-iron eyes glinted with attraction, with light, with hope. “You want an apple?” she choked out. “Just eat an apple. Don’t go all crazy and put it in a doughnut.”
He tipped his head back and laughed, the sound delectable and delicious. His hair flitted along the tops of his bare shoulders, and Abby compulsively reached out to place her finger where the two met.
Upon contact, Noah stilled and silenced.
“Sorry,” she murmured, already missing his laughter.
“Nothing to be sorry about.” He leaned closer, dragging in a deep breath as his forehead touched hers. “So I’m a lost cause. Let’s work on you.”
Sudden fear gripped her. “You didn’t Google me, right?”
“I said I wouldn’t.”
He didn’t seem to be lying, but the pit that had become a part of her in LA returned to her stomach.
“So you’re off the grid,” he said, his fingers tightening against hers. “Anything illegal?”
Not technically. “No.”
“And you have an aunt here.”
“My favorite aunt,” she corrected.
“Who happens to live allll the way across the country from Los Angeles.”
So he hadn’t forgotten that part. “Yeah, well, there isn’t a ski resort within five hundred miles of Barefoot Bay.” She cocked her eyebrows at him as if to say, So there.
“Who says I came from a ski resort?”
She grinned at him, glad when he returned the gesture to reveal his straight, white teeth. “I do, Mister Snowboarder.”
Something hungry entered his expression, and this time when he dipped his head toward hers, he didn’t make casual contact. Oh, no. His lips brushed her neck, sending explosions through her.
“Mm,” he moaned as he moved his mouth north toward hers. Was she really going to kiss him? Already? Did she want to kiss him? What would she do if she didn’t like it?
The fleeting thought of, You’re going to like it, ran through her mind as his breath mingled with hers.
“Abby,” he whispered, seeking permission.
She realized then that her eyes had drifted closed in anticipation. Her heart thrummed a steady pulse in her neck. Every cell seemed poised, clenched, waiting for his lips to touch hers.
“No—” She couldn’t finish saying his name before a loud knock sounded on the villa door.
Abby’s eyes flew open and Noah backed up two inches, his soul-capturing gaze still on her. “Food’s here.” But he didn’t move to let in the room service.
“I’m starving,” she whispered.
“Me too.” His gaze dropped to her mouth, and just when she thought sure he’d kiss her and make room service wait, he straightened and stood, leaving her cold and alone on the chaise. Abby exhaled. Where she’d been torn about coming to his villa, now she was glad she’d made the spontaneous decision.
She hurried to pull out her phone and send her aunt a text. I might be a while at Casa Blanca still. She hadn’t exactly told Aunt Macey that she was meeting a stranger after work. But she hadn’t exactly lied either. She did hope to be a while at Casa Blanca still.
She also sent a more excited message to Maryann, the only other person on the island who knew she wasn’t at home where she should be. Noah is awesome, she typed. More in the morning!
Abby had barely glanced away from her phone when a new text came in. What do you mean more in the morning? Like you’re staying with him tonight??
She grinned at the thought—though she’d never do such a thing—and stuck her phone under her thigh when Noah appeared with the first tray of food.
“And here we have the horrible, awful, no-good fruit mixed with cheese.” He set the tray of grapes, dried apple slices, halved strawberries and an assortment of cheeses on the glass table and flashed her the sexiest smile before heading back inside for more.
4
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